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Video: Is This the End of China's Economic Miracle?

by Matt Schiavenza

22 April 2016

In the past four decades, China has transformed itself from an impoverished, rural backwater into the world's second-largest economy. But the recent slowing of the country's GDP raises an uncomfortable question: Is China's economic model no longer able to provide ample growth?

This question framed a lively conversation, hosted by Chinafile on Wednesday at Asia Society, featuring Jamil Anderlini, Richard McGregor, and Lucy Hornby of the Financial Times, Center for U.S.-China Relations Arthur Ross Director Orville Schell, and financier and philanthropist George Soros. The event also included a screening of The End of China's Economic Miracle?, a short documentary produced by the Financial Times.

Soros, who built a fortune in part on betting on the financial health of developing economies, struck a cautious note, saying that China's economy "eerily resembles" that of the United States preceding the 2008 global economic slowdown. McGregor, author of an acclaimed book on the Chinese Communist Party, added that China's opaque political system was problematic. "You can't build a great society without an open society," he said.

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